7 Biggest Eye-care Bloopers

By:Ariba Khaliq, Onlymyhealth Editorial Team,Date:Dec 30, 2014

We use our eyes for the most part of the day and it is important to care for them. Good if you do, but are you doing it right? Yes, you could commit mistakes in your ways of caring for your eyes. Read on to know if you are making any of these.

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Taking Care of Those Peepers

It is all thanks to new technology which has given us disposable contacts to LASIK, and has made it extremely easy to get the perfect vision without having to wear clumsy specs or reading glasses. In fact, the latest science has found ways to unsightly crow's-feet and dark circles at bay. But while it's great to look and see better, you want your eyes to feel better too. We rely on our eyes from the moment we wake up to when we turn off the lights at night. But are we really giving our eyes the care they deserve? Here are the biggest bloopers people make when it comes to taking care of their peepers.

Not Cleaning Your Contact Lenses

Nearly a million yearly doctor visits in America are for inflamed corneas and other contact lens-related eye infections. If you don’t clean your contacts properly, bacteria, fungi such as Fusarium, amebae such as Acanthamoeba, and viruses can grow on the lenses. The bacteria may even mix with water to form a germ-protecting biofilm that makes contacts especially hard to disinfect. These microbes can then infect your eyes. Also, a lot of people take shortcuts and try to stretch daily lenses to 2 days, 2-week lenses to 3, and so on. Again, that’s like inviting bacteria into your peepers. Just don’t do that!

Sleeping with Contacts On

If keeping them unclean wasn’t enough, a lot of people sleep with their contacts on. The risk of developing a corneal ulcer is 10 to 15 times greater in extended-wear contact lens users than those who only wear their contacts during the day, reveals an American Academy of Ophthalmology study. And don’t even think about sleeping in contact lens. If you do so, you deprive your corneas of oxygen, and that’s a neat way to encourage infection-causing bacteria to grow. It’s okay to take a 20-minute nap in your contacts but to be safe, take them out beforehand; you might oversleep.

Touching and Rubbing Eyes too Often

Unnecessary poking and rubbing of your eyes is like inviting trouble regardless of whether you wear contacts or not. When your eyes itch and you have to rub, the best way is to keep the lid closed and only touch the outside of the eye. If you rub them too hard, you can also cause the blood vessels to break and become inflamed. Not convinced enough? Your eyes are protected by mucous membranes, which are moist tissues that can easily collect dirt and germs, making them a great place for bacteria to grow. If you shake someone’s hand and then you rub your eyes, you’re transmitting those germs and there’s a good chance you can catch whatever cold they’ve got.

Not Getting Eyes Tested Annually

Many people haven’t had an eye exam even in 10 years because their vision was 20/20 the last time it was checked. And vision changes aren’t even the most important reason you should still see an eye doctor annually. It should be don’t to get your overall eye health checked out. There are no pain receptors behind the eye, so if you have a broken blood vessel or a tumour back there, you would otherwise not know it until it starts to interfere with your vision, or worse.

Staring at Screens all the Time

Electronic screens, such as those of your computers, tablets, and smartphones, emit blue light, which are considered to be as harmful as the sun’s ultraviolet rays, by some doctors. Additionally, focusing on anything for hours on end can cause eye strain and headaches. If you were told to run around your city non-stop for hours, your calves would be pretty sore afterwards. Similarly, your eyes go through a lot when you don’t take a break from your computer all day. Instead, follow the 20-20 rule: For every 20 minutes you look at a screen, take a 20-second break to look into the distance, refocus your eyes on something else, and make a conscious effort to blink. You may not have been doing enough of it before.

Wearing Eyeliner on Your Waterline

No matter how much the makeup artists swear by putting liner on the inside of your lower lashes, it’s actually quite risky. Applying eyeliner inside your eye causes it to mix with your tears. In case you’re wearing contacts, your lenses then get coated in tiny makeup particles, which can deprive your eyes of oxygen. And even when you’re not wearing contacts, those makeup particles can also be carrying germs that can cause infection. Liquid liners are especially dangerous, because the applicator tip sits in a tube that can hold bacteria. Soft pencils are safer since they are continuously being worn down and a new “tip” is exposed, it is still recommended that you apply them outside the eye only.

Depending on Redness-reducing Drops

The overuse of redness-reducing eye drops is one of the biggest blunders. The variants you buy in the drugstore contain vasoconstrictors, which shrink blood vessels and temporarily make your eyes appear less red. But they also contain preservatives and other chemicals that can make your problem even worse in the long run, and it’s only a matter of time before you experience a rebound effect. If you constantly experience your eyes to be red or irritated, it’s important to see an eye doctor who can get to the root of your problem. They can better recommend an over-the-counter product (like a moisturizing “artificial tears” drop) or suggest other forms of treatment.

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